


Breakfast in Bed

by NahaFlowers



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Before and After, Fluff and Angst, Forehead Touching, M/M, Past Abuse, Trauma, as always I want to kill Alfred Hamilton even though he's already dead, because would it really be a flinthamilton fic without it?, honestly mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 05:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11571492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NahaFlowers/pseuds/NahaFlowers
Summary: Thomas tries and fails to make breakfast for James, before and after Bedlam. James will always be there to hold him, regardless of prowess in the kitchen or lack thereof, not to mention his tears over silly things like burning the bacon.





	Breakfast in Bed

**Author's Note:**

> "Thomas trying to make James breakfast in bed could make for a cute and funny fic," I thought to myself. "Why not make it as angsty as possible?" whispered the demon muse in my brain.

“James,” whispered Thomas one morning, as he kissed a still-mostly-asleep James on the forehead, “I have an idea.”

With that, he moved the bedclothes aside and got out of bed. James groaned and sat up.

“No, no, don’t get up,” said Thomas, in a half-whisper. “I’ll be right back.”

James watched from the bed as Thomas retrieved his nightshirt from the floor where it has been discarded the night before and tugged it over his head, his hair emerging sticking up in all directions and almost halo-like in the half-light. He put on his slippers and kissed James on the cheek. “Go back to sleep, my love.” James sighed and closed his eyes. Thomas left. He fell into a doze, wondering what on Earth Thomas was doing.

Half an hour later, James was sat up in bed, reading. He wondered when Thomas was going to be back from whatever ridiculous errand was keeping him from the warmth of James’s bed. James grinned to himself. Then he heard footsteps approaching the bedroom, before Thomas opened the door with his foot, on account of the fact that he was bearing two mugs of coffee. His face was like thunder as he handed James his.

“Thank you,” said James quietly, blowing on the hot liquid before taking a sip. “Although I can’t help but notice that you were gone rather a long time. Surely coffee doesn’t take so long to prepare?”

Thomas turned to James, brow furrowed, lower lip sticking out in consternation.

“I wanted to make you breakfast in bed!” he exclaimed. James raised an eyebrow. Thomas’s brows furrowed in annoyance once again. “But it didn’t quite go to plan.”

James licked his lips, trying not to laugh. “Is any of it…salvageable?” he asked, and bit back a grin when Thomas glared at him.

“I don’t know!” he cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. “You can come and see, if you like, but probably not.”

“All right,” James agreed, a small smile on his lips as he kissed Thomas’s wrinkled brow. Thomas’s face relaxed immediately.

“I’m sorry, James. I don’t mean to snap at you. I just wanted to surprise you.”

James hushed hum and led the way out of the room, only just remembering to replace his nightshirt, for appearance’s sake.

When they got to the kitchen, James surveyed the wreckage. It was comparable to the smugglers’ wrecks he’d seen as a boy along the Cornish coast, although in those cases, at least there had been goods to salvage. Here everything was charred, raw, or in the memorable case of the eggs, both.

James turned to Thomas. “Well, I appreciate the effort,” he said diplomatically. Then: “How did you manage to get egg on the ceiling?” He indicated the yellow yolk dripping from the high ceiling, forming a yellow puddle on the floor.

Thomas looked sheepish. “I may have been a little frustrated.”

James laughed. Thomas smiled too, but it was really more of a grimace. James moved in front of him, taking his hands, forcing Thomas to look at him, rather than gazing around at the wreckage of the room.

“You’re really upset about this, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Thomas admitted.

James sighed, at a loss. “I really do appreciate the effort, you know. No one’s ever even _attempted_ to bring me breakfast in bed before,” he said wonderingly.

Far from pacifying Thomas, however, this just seemed to make him more frustrated than ever.

“That’s exactly my point! You deserve nice things! And I wanted it to be a surprise!” He pouted, and Thomas couldn’t resist kissing his protruding lips, stroking his thumb soothingly across his lover’s cheek. Thomas sighed, and James felt some of the tension melt from his body.

“I know, my love,” James whispered into Thomas’s cheek. “But, you know, as much as I’d have loved the surprise, I much prefer spending time with you. Whether we’re talking about books, or making breakfast, or,” here he caught Thomas’s eye and then looked away shyly, and said in a soft voice, “making love.”

Thomas hummed, in pleasure or agreement.

“Did you use it all, or are there any supplies left?” asked James after a moment, in which they just swayed gently in each other’s arms.

“There’s a little left in the pantry,” Thomas said in a whisper, as if he did not want to break the moment.

James smiled. “In that case, we’ll fetch it, and I’ll teach you how _not_ to burn breakfast,” he said teasingly. Thomas grinned, a little ruefully. “For next time.”

So they made breakfast, in their nightshirts, in the deserted kitchen, together.

 

* * *

 

 

Thomas’s cooking skills had improved somewhat since that first lesson with James, ten years ago. He now often cooked James breakfast, and he savoured the gesture – the routine of cooking, the delighted surprise that would always blossom on James’s face no matter how many times he brought him breakfast in bed, the kisses that followed like an inevitability, but never getting boring, never stale.

Today, however, distracted by the chickens in the yard and the cat slinking through his legs and yowling for her breakfast, Thomas had forgotten to watch the bacon, and it was quite as ruined as that first disastrous attempt had been all those years ago. The eggs too. Thomas felt the old familiar despair creeping over him.

James found him ten minutes later, crying on the stone floor of their tiny kitchen.

He knelt to the floor, alarmed. “Thomas,” he said, getting his attention before daring to touch him – he tended to flinch these days if he was touched without warning. James did not ask why – Thomas very rarely seemed inclined to talk about his time at Bedlam, and if James was honest, he wasn’t sure he could bear to hear it. They had each other now, that was enough. That had to be enough. “Thomas, what’s wrong?”

Thomas finally looked at him, and James took the opportunity to gently take Thomas’s hand in his. Thomas gripped it tighter as he spoke. “I burned the breakfast,” he said in a hollow voice.

James had surmised as much; it had been the smell of cremated bacon that had drawn him from bed in the first place. He remembered how upset Thomas had been the first time he had tried to cook James breakfast and failed miserably. And that without all the intervening years of pain and horror that James had so far only seen the edges of.

He took a deep breath, and put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. When Thomas did not show any signs of discomfort, he wrapped his arm around his shoulders proper, pulling him in tight. Thomas sagged into him, burying his head in James’s shoulder, shoulders still shaking but clearly making a valiant effort to stop. James wished he wouldn’t, wished he didn’t feel like he needed to.

He kissed his hair. “You know I’m not upset, don’t you? I don’t care about the damn breakfast, Thomas. I care about you.”

Thomas looked up at him blearily. “There’s nothing left though,” he said. “We have no breakfast at all.” His breath hitched on the last word and he sobbed into James shoulder again. James stroked his hair tenderly and made hushing noises.

“Well, that’s alright. I could probably do without the breakfast – I’m getting a bit chubby,” he said, patting his stomach.

Thomas gazed up at him reproachfully, slipping a hand under James’s nightshirt to feel his slightly chubby tummy. “You know I love your belly,” he said.

“Is that what all these breakfasts have been in aid of, then?” asked James teasingly. “Are you trying to fatten me up?”

Thomas let out a wet giggle, but then broke down in tears again, turning away from James. James leaned forward very slightly, looking anxious.

“What is it?” he asked, voice serious.

Thomas shook his head. “It’s- really silly,” he said, between sobs.

“I don’t care,” said James, softly. “If it’s making you this upset, I want to know.”

Thomas wiped his eyes on his sleeves and met James’s gaze. “A lot of silly things make me upset these days.”

James nodded, gulping down the lump in his throat. “I know,” he said, sounding strained. “And I haven’t asked you about them. I assumed you didn’t want to talk about it, but more than that, I didn’t really want you to talk about it. I thought it would make me feel guilty. I put my own feelings before yours.” He spoked with difficulty – self-loathing dripping off every syllable – and Thomas looked at him sharply. He squeezed James’s hand again, but said nothing to contradict his words – they were the truth, plain and simple, and Thomas wouldn’t have James lie to him, no matter how much it might hurt.

“Telling you isn’t going to make you feel less guilty,” he said.

“I don’t care,” said James, taking a deep breath, as if preparing himself for the worst. “This isn’t about me.”

Thomas looked James in the eye, ascertaining that he actually did want him to tell the truth. Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair, looking away from James, towards the open door through which sunlight was streaming.

“The thing is,” he said slowly, as if measuring the weight of every word, “it sort of is about you.”

“What do you mean?” said James, voice low.

“When I was in – that place,” Thomas said, voice tight, “I was convinced that you would come for me.” Thomas carefully avoided looking at James. “It made their – treatment – of me difficult, at best. So they tried to convince me that you wouldn’t come back, that you had abandoned me.” He heard James suck in a breath, but did not let himself look up. “When that didn’t work, when I told them that you were the best person I knew, that you would never do such a thing, they tried a different tactic. They tried to convince me that _I_ wasn’t good enough for _you_ , that the reason you hadn’t come back for me was because I had let you down. I’m ashamed to say it worked, at least to some extent. And one of the memories I dwelled upon,” he said, raising his voice slightly, because he had seen James open his mouth to speak out of the corner of his eye, “was the breakfast I ruined. How disappointing I must have been to you, even though you never showed it. How you deserved more, deserved better.”

“But Thomas,” said James, carefully, “surely you couldn’t believe a small thing like that could ever make me stop loving you, stop me trying to get back to you?”

“You don’t know what it was like in that place,” said Thomas harshly.

James felt his heart wrench in his chest, and knew it had shown on his face when Thomas looked at him slightly guiltily. James wanted to tell him that, no, he shouldn’t _ever_ feel guilty for speaking harshly to him, for speaking the _truth_ , but he could not find the words.

“And you don’t know what it was like growing up with my father,” Thomas continued, much more quietly. He met James’s eyes, and James saw his blue ones were filled with pain. “The smallest misstep earned me his wrath. For years I thought he hated me for something _I’d_ done, that his behaviour towards me was my fault, somehow.” He sighed. “Of course, now I know that’s not true. He was just – ”

“A bastard,” said James, grimly.

“And worse,” Thomas agreed. “But that kind of thing, it-” he sucked in a deep breath, “it stays with you.”

Their eyes met again, and James didn’t know what to say, how to abate the lifetime of pain he saw in Thomas’s eyes.

“I would kill him a thousand times over, if I could,” he growled, knowing that it would never be enough.

Thomas smiled darkly. “I appreciate that. I- I’m not sure if I thanked you,” he took another deep breath, “for killing him. I’m glad you did.” He raised a hand to brush a stray hair out of James’s eyes – it as growing longer every day, but it had streaks of grey in it now – it made him look quite distinguished, although James had looked away, blushing in embarrassment when Thomas had told him so. He leaned his forehead against James’s. “Now he can never hurt me again,” he said softly.

Silent tears poured down James’s face at that, mingling with Thomas’s, so they were crying together, not knowing whose tears were whose. And then, suddenly, they were kissing, softly but desperately, tears still falling, and both could taste the salt on their tongues. Eventually, one of them suggested they go back to bed, and they did so, kissing still, until they fell asleep. They did not wake again until noon, but when they did, it felt as if something had healed.

**Author's Note:**

> I broke through my writer's block with this! Comments are love (and might encourage more writing, especially on [Silly Wrong But Vivid Right](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11391675/chapters/25511136))


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